I Just Read About That…

[WATCHED: March 19, 2011] Until the Light Takes Us

Soon after finishing Lords of Chaos, I heard a radio interview on the Sound of Young America with the directors of this movie (which is about the same black metal scene in Norway).  I finally got around to watching the film, and I’m really glad I did.

It covers much of the same terrain as Lords of Chaos (although the book covers much more stuff), but what’s cooler about the movie is actually seeing these guys talk to you.  And seeing how “normal these guys are.”  The two “stars” of the movie are Fenriz from Darkthrone and the main man in the scene, Varg Vikerens.

In the radio interview, the directors talked about the way they structured the film. And, I’ll reveal a bit of that.  So if you don’t know this particular fact, I’ll give the next line as a spoiler alert:

SPOILER ALERT: (Highlight the blank space to read it) Varg is in jail for murder and for the burning of several churches and was sentenced to 21 years in prison.

They don’t reveal this information until very late in the film.  So when we first meet Varg, he is a clean cut, handsome man in his late 30s.  He is in jail (although not explicitly stated, it is clear he is in jail).  And he is talking about the Norwegian black metal scene.  Vikerens formed the band Burzum in 1991.  He later joined the band Mayhem.

Mayhem is at the center of the black metal controversy.  The singer of Mayhem, Dead, killed himself with a shotgun.  The guitarist Euronymous found him and took pictures of him (one of which was used as a bootleg album cover–ewww) before calling the police (and it is believed he took some “souvenirs” from the scene).

Vikerens talks about growing up in idyllic Norway, which is peaceful and beautiful–but he undermines all of that by talking about the fairly typical suburban ennui that kids face.  Of course, in Norway it surfaced in violence and death.   Later, he talks about Christianity and how when it came into Norway there was no respect for the Norwegian culture.  Christians built churches on top of ceremonial grounds.  And it seems that he and his mates became very interested in Norwegian folklore and avenging the wrongs done to it.

He laughs off suggestions of Satanism, which he seems to think is childish.  Rather, this was more about paganism.

Intercut with this interview are scenes of the daily life of Fenriz.  Fenriz is another major figure in the black metal scene, having co-created the band Darkthrone in the late 1980s.   Notably, Fenriz has crazy long hair, and looks far more like a metal guy than Varg.  But aside from constantly dropping the F word he is also a very nice-seeming, mellow kind of  guy.

We see him on a train (getting hassled by the cops–who find some contraband, but not his drugs).  We see him wandering around Oslo (the footage is beautiful).  We see a pretty funny scene of him in his office doing an interview.  And, my favorite part, we hear him talking about the kind of music he likes outside of black metal (he has created several bands devoted to  non-black metal music like Neptune Towers–his dip into ambient music).

The movie itself looks at the history of the black metal scene (with occasional, but not enough, old footage of the early black metal bands).  And then it looks cursorily at the church burnings and deaths that followed.  The movie isn’t terribly graphic (although the photos of Dead’s (bloody) suicide are included) and there is much video news footage of the burning churches.

There has been criticism that the film is too “nice” to Varg (who was convicted after all).  Lords of Chaos suggests that Varg’s volatility is real.  And if I recall correctly, the radio interview said that the directors did have to promise Varg some kind of boon for him to be in the film at all.  So, yes, it definitely glosses over his more brutal moments (of course, he does tell the story of what happened, so the truth is there, it’s just his version of things).  Nevertheless, for a dramatic structure–and all good documentary needs a dramatic structure–I think it works very well.  Naturally, just about anybody who sees this film will know something about the scene, so they’ll know already about who Varg was and is.  But it does make for a compelling narrative.

The film works best as an introduction to the scene.  It’s not in-depth by any stretch of the imagination, although it feels more personal than the book did.  So, even after having read the “definitive” book about the scene, I found the film to be enlightening, strangely humorous, and totally fascinating.

In addition to everything above, there’s also interviews with a couple contemporary black metal musicians (they come as a surprise because they don’t show up until about 2/3 of the way through the film) and a totally bizarre performance art scene in which Kjetil “Frost” Haraldstad (of Satyricon) burns his art and then proceeds to cut a couch and then himself with a very large knife.

The strangest thing about the film, though is the pacing.  Black metal is typically very fast, whereas this movie is rather slow.  I don’t feel the pacing is boring, but there is quite a lot of footage of Fenriz walking.  I rather wish the soundtrack was available, or that I could at least find out which songs were in the film.  The bands that they play are: Black Dice, Boards of Canada, Burzum, Darkthrone, Enslaved, Gorgoroth, Lesser, Mayhem, Mum, Sunn O))), Thorns, Ulver.